


#1

by dramaturgicallycorrect



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - X-Men Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-16 00:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7245628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramaturgicallycorrect/pseuds/dramaturgicallycorrect
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I know what you are,” Mueller growls.</i>
</p>
<p>  <i>Tommo lifts and slams him back against the bar. Zayn looks around, finds the bartender and the rest of the patrons casually minding their own. Must be business as usual in a place like this.</i></p>
<p>  <i>When Zayn looks back, there’s a knife in his hand, long and thin and shining even in the pub’s dim light. Only when Zayn looks hard enough, it’s not a knife at all but a thin blade, nor is it so much in his hand as it is protruding from it, resting dangerously at Mueller’s pulse point. </i></p>
<p>  <i>Zayn’s heart pounds. He’s a mutant.</i><br/> </p>
<p>[Or issue number one.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	#1

**Author's Note:**

> jessi and i are doing a series of drabbles in our x-men au! welcome!!
> 
> mine are all gen, just tagging whatever relationship has the forefront in the fic. originally posted on tumblr.

When Zayn closes his eyes, he sees her face, he sees the veins crawl up it, he sees the light leave her eyes. So he doesn’t close his eyes much. He doesn’t sleep until he’s pulled into it, until his body wrenches consciousness from him and he’s too weak to fight it.

Sometimes he almost feels like laughing about it, the irony of it all. He doesn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times he’s been yelled at by his mum for sleeping the day away, not doing something with his life.

He’s hardly doing much better now, all he’s doing with his life is walking. North and north and north to this place outside Glasgow that’s rumored to have a cure. He doesn’t trust himself on public transit too often, too much can go wrong, too many people can get hurt, so it’s walking. It’s only walking.

He has to stop more often, his clothing hardly suited for winter, and that has him duck into a pub some ways off the side of the M6, blanketed by snow. Zayn figures for the lack of cars out front it can’t be too busy, but he’s wrong. His stomach drops and twists because he’s nowhere close to alone. The place is brimming.

Nothing about the outside betrays just how big the place is, how the bar’s only half of it, and the rest of it stretches out down a small flight of stairs to what looks like it could be a dance floor in a nicer place. But here it’s like a boxing ring.

Instead of ropes, it’s just a crowd of people creating the ring, informally circled around two men who circle each other. The audience goads them, shouting encouragements that Zayn soon enough learns is one-sided. He gets it, though, one of ‘em’s about six foot something, twenty stone, and he’s looking confident.

The other one – this kid in the threadbare jumper? He’s wiry, wearing stubble like he’s trying to prove just how old he is. He’s got wrists so thin Zayn can almost see through them. He’ll get slaughtered. And nobody’s going to stop it. It’s sick, they’re all sick if they call this entertainment.

The men surrounding them start a slow chant _of oi oi oi oi oi_ until it crescendos, finishing in all out chaos once the first punch is thrown.

The beefy one lands a hook to the kid’s face that has him reeling so bad Zayn’s sure the kid is seeing spots, likely to fall flat on his face at any moment. But then, incredibly, the kid rallies, finding his feet again, and he throws a smug, bloody grin at his opponent.

Zayn turns away from the railing. He can’t watch it, he can’t be party to it. He uses one of his few remaining quid to get a pack of crisps from a vending machine by the loos and orders a pint he’s not certain he can pay for but needs to swallow down the acid threatening to climb up his throat. Sometimes he can slip by unnoticed, sometimes he sticks out like a sore thumb.

Sometimes it feels like his body is working against him, pulling the focus of a room, absorbing it until someone comes over to offer themselves to him. His fingers, traitorous, itch to steal what doesn’t belong to him. He’s never been a thief before, and now he can’t help it. The thought makes him want to vomit.

Every shout of the crowd has him wincing, fighting the pull to watch as the excitement in the air absorbs into his skin to energize him. It was a mistake to come in here, but it’s warm.

He cranes his neck to see the kid dodging, feinting, lightning fast on his feet, and before Zayn knows it – and before his opponent knows it – the kid has him in a headlock. The big bloke is fading fast, gasping and slapping uselessly at the kid’s tattooed forearm until he collapses on the floor and taps out.

He closes his eyes and turns back to his beer as the crowd turns sour against the victor. They were also anticipating a slaughter, and they don’t appear particularly pleased to be disappointed.

Zayn likes the way his pint makes his toes go warm, doesn’t want to sip it too fast because his head’ll spin a bit and he doesn’t like to walk drunk. But all the while, he’s keeping an ear out for the crowd, watching for the surge he figures they’ll make for the bar to know when he should time his exit.

His stomach rumbles, so he picks at the bag of crisps, frustrated quickly as his gloves slide against it, unable to make purchase.

“That’ll be easier to open if you take the gloves off,” says the kid from the fight, suddenly leaned up against the bar beside Zayn.

Zayn doesn’t startle, or tries his best not to. He can’t take his gloves off, and he doesn’t exactly need advice about things that are stunningly obvious. He’s about four seconds from just popping the bag on the counter, the explosion of crisps be damned, when the crisps are snatched from him. Even though he’s wearing gloves, he shies away once the kid’s hands come over.

The bag is popped quickly and returned to the counter space in front of him.

Zayn looks back at him, closer than he has, notes the sharpness of his cheeks and jawline, mirrored in his eyes as he stares and stares at Zayn. There’s something admittedly familiar looking about him, though that could just be how he looks like a standard Yorkshire lad, nothing much special about him. At least not from outside appearances.

“One of whatever he has,” the bloke says, turning suddenly to lean on the counter to grab the attention of the bartender, “and something else that’s not as shit as whatever he has.”

The bartender grunts, a noise of surprise. “Feeling generous, Tommo?”

Tommo grins, sharklike, reminiscent of the grin he’d traded his opponent not ten minutes ago. “The spoils of victory.”

The bartender grunts again as he slides the two pints on the counter in front of them.

“Ta,” Zayn says quietly. “And congratulations. I guess.”

Tommo turns the grin on Zayn, taking a slurping pull before he says, “I’m only slightly offended by your tone of surprise. You can call me Tommo, if you like.” He offers a hand. Zayn doesn’t take it and he doesn’t offer his own name.

“You see the size of that guy?” Zayn says instead, deflecting instead of ignoring him outright, and he’s not sure why. “Do you have a death wish?”

Tommo laughs, ruefully, and Zayn feels like he’s missed the joke even though he’s the one who’s supposedly told it.

“Don’t get a lot of pretty boys like you in a shithole like this.”

Zayn would bristle but there’s something about his tone that doesn’t read like a come on, just genuine curiosity. Sometimes Zayn sticks out like a sore thumb.

He shrugs. “Just passing through, needed a drink.”

“Where you headed?”

“North,” Zayn says shortly, hoping he’s translating that’s the end of that. He drains what he can of his first pint, not even touching the one Tommo’s got him, thinking it might be time to leave.

“You little fucking _shit_ ,” says Tommo’s opponent, shoving himself between the two of them, one of his hands barely brushing Tommo’s shoulder before he’s spun around and pressed hard against the bar, Tommo’s elbow digging cruelly into his back.

“Lay off, Mueller, you’ll live to fight another day,” Tommo says impatiently, like Mueller’s just a pest and not trying to beat the shit out of him.

Mueller struggles, but Tommo’s holding firm. “There’s fucking something about you.”

“Is it my eyes? I’ve been told you can find an ocean in them, blue as they are.”

“I know what you are,” Mueller growls.

Tommo lifts and slams him back against the bar. Zayn looks around, finds the bartender and the rest of the patrons casually minding their own. Must be business as usual in a place like this.

When Zayn looks back, there’s a knife in his hand, long and thin and shining even in the pub’s dim light. Only when Zayn looks hard enough, it’s not a knife at all but a thin blade, nor is it so much in his hand as it is protruding from it, resting dangerously at Mueller’s pulse point.

Zayn’s heart pounds. He’s a mutant.

He’s gotta get the fuck out of here.

Tommo pats at the bloke’s back twice with his other hand, condescension dripping all over action. “We’re cool, eh, Mueller? Wouldn’t want to do anything rash, would we?”

“No,” grunts Mueller, and as soon as he gives in, the blade slides back into Tommo’s skin and Tommo lets him up, blows him a kiss as he shuffles away from them.

Zayn keeps his head down, his heart rate in check, breathes slowly to unknot his stomach if he can, to erase the tension pounding through his blood.

“Fuckin’ prick.” Tommo leans against the bar again, checking his nails for blood. Or something. “D’you need a ride or sommat?” he asks, casual like nothing’s just happened.

“No, m’good on my own.”

He snorts.

“What?” It comes out more defensive than Zayn wants it to be.

Tommo lifts his hands up like he means no harm, like he’s allowed to think something of Zayn, like he’s allowed to say something. “I mean, Jesus, you look like death.”

Zayn narrows his eyes. “Cheers.”

“Look, you’re either hitching or you’re walking through the snow in those shoes that are just asking to get you frostbite, like. If I can help, I will.”

Zayn stands finally, uncertain why it’s taken him this long to get to that decision. “I can’t. I can’t go with you, you’ll get hurt.”

Tommo arches an unimpressed eyebrow. “Trust me, mate, no, I won’t.”

Zayn shakes his head at him, like Tommo doesn’t fucking understand, and Zayn’s not in any position to argue with him. Nobody knows what he’s capable of, not just by looking at him. He figures maybe he and Tommo are the same that way.

He pulls his hood over his head as soon as he pushes back outside into the snow. His fingers itch for a cigarette, though he’s smoked his last three days ago and had to make the choice to eat over combatting the anxiety the only way he knows how.

The motorway stretches ahead of him, miles to go before he sleeps, but he doesn’t get very far. He tenses when a rusty pickup truck pulls up beside him, crawling until they both stop together.

Tommo cranks down his window. “Are you sure you don’t need a ride? You’re about to fall over.”

Zayn eyes him, can’t help or understand the settling feeling when he does. It’s not that Zayn trusts him, he doesn’t trust anyone, but something inside him, maybe the same bit that sort of recognizes him, is telling him they should stick together. “Where you going?”

Tommo shrugs. “Where you going?”

“Glasgow.”

Tommo blinks at him, scratching at his chin. “Ah. That’s. Farther than I thought.”

Zayn doesn’t say anything, turns to keep walking, but stops up when he hears Tommo shout, “All right, all right, get in.”

Zayn does, perching himself carefully in the passenger seat, far as he can from Tommo so he’s not risking anything. It’s a relief to sit down, a relief to be out of the snow. He waits for Tommo to put the car in gear, but he doesn’t.

“Safety first,” he prompts.

Zayn does up his seatbelt, and even then Tommo doesn’t move the car. He shifts in his seat until he’s looking at Zayn, something considering in his expression.

“Listen, I’ve got to be real with you,” Tommo starts, and _this is it_ , Zayn thinks. This is when it all goes fucking downhill, and it’s the one and only time he’s thankful he can defend himself absolutely. “You look a bit familiar to me, and nothing looks – ”

His voice cuts off with a disgusting, guttural noise, wrenched from him when a thick arrow strikes him in the chest. He slumps in his chair, fucking dead, and Zayn’s not sure if the impulse to sick up all over himself is stronger than the impulse to run. In the end, running wins out.

“Fuck, _fuck_ ,” Zayn hisses, scrambling to get the door open. But there’s someone waiting for him just as he swings the door open, a woman grinning at him, pointed green teeth on display. She lifts a hand and blows, a cloud of green dust appearing from it – or maybe it was there the whole time. Zayn chokes on it, forcing deep breaths in that he knows he shouldn’t take but does anyway, a natural human instinct.

He tips out of the car, suddenly limp, and hits the ground hard. She kicks at him, hard and unforgiving, until he’s rolling off the road, down the small grass hill towards the trees.

She stands over him, straddling either side of his body, a rope in one hand. She moves for him. It’s clear what she intends to do, but why exactly, Zayn can’t figure out.

“No,” Zayn mumbles, jerking his arms away until his arms can’t move. His eyes slide shut, but he doesn’t fall from consciousness. He feels paralyzed, almost, can’t move his arms, legs, can’t say nothing, none of it.

He can hear things, but he can’t make sense of it – the sound of something hitting something else, groans, slashing, running.

Then he feels someone hovering over him, breathing in his face, and it’s Tommo, saying desperately, “Hey, mate. Mate?”

Zayn can’t answer, can’t find his voice, can’t do anything but breathe, and even then, it’s getting harder. The sound of Tommo swearing over him starts to fade.

“Ah, fuck, come on,” he hisses, and then he’s pawing at Zayn’s jacket.

His eyes fly open at the touch of two warm fingers to his neck, right where his pulse is. His body lights up as he takes and he takes, second nature. He returns to himself from the top down, his eyes and his neck buzzing and filling with enough warmth and life that he can turn to look at the stranger.

The black veins creep up from his hand and branch upward, his arm hidden by a coat, but Zayn knows they’re there. His eyes have clouded over black and his thin mouth is open and gasping. It’s the stuff of Zayn’s nightmares, and he’s powerless to stop it.

Zayn sucks away his life like he can’t help it, like his body and his brain aren’t talking to each other. Because his brain’s shouting he needs to stop before he kills the bloke, before the light leaves his eyes, and his body’s just fighting to survive.

His bones feel wrong, heavy. His hand seizes, his fingers curling into a fist until three metal blades slide out between his knuckles like claws, slicing through the skin and patching it up so quickly he doesn’t bleed, but he feels it, the searing pain. Seconds later, they slide back into his skin, somehow defying the laws of biology – though he supposes biology means fuck all to mutants.

Once Zayn regains the feeling in his arms, he shoves Tommo off of him, breaking their contact. They suck in desperate breaths, panting nearly synced up with each other.

“That’s… a hell of a party trick,” Tommo slurs, patting at Zayn’s chest weakly. He’s not – he’s not dead. Not dead dead by the stranger’s hands because his chest is arrowless, not brain dead by Zayn’s hands because he’s moving and talking.

It’s hard to curve his mouth around the words as he slowly answers, “Could say the same to you.”

Tommo laughs, but Zayn’s not sure it’s one of mirth or disbelief or despair.

Zayn doesn’t know whether to cry or scream or run, so he sits there in the dirt, learning what he missed. The lady with the green teeth lays a bit off in the distance, a pool of blood around her neck. There’s another bloke Zayn hadn’t seen, his body slumped up on the incline leading to the road, an arrow loosely resting in his hand, three slashes up his chest.

Tommo rises and points an accusatory finger at him. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Zayn?” he answers dumbly.

“Yeah?” Tommo laughs again, and this time it’s dark. “And who the hell are they?”

“I’ve no idea.” He looks at them again, the lady with the green teeth and the archer in the distance. “You – you killed them.”

“They killed me first?” He points at the hole in his jumper, bloody but not leading to a hole in his chest.

Zayn finds the strength to roll to his feet, pacing because he doesn’t know which way to go or what to do. It’s fucked up – this whole thing is so fucked up. He watched Tommo die, but he didn’t die, and he didn’t see these people die, but they’re dead. They could have just killed Zayn with an arrow, same as Tommo, only they didn’t, they were going to tie him up –

“Pardon me,” a deep voice behind them says.

Tommo turns, claws extending from his right hand like he’s ready to jump into a fight. He pauses then, just when Zayn does, and Zayn wonders if it’s for the same reason. Zayn’s seen this man before. There’s an echo of familiarity about him, not as he stands here in front of them in a black flight suit in the snow, but there’s something.

“I’ve had a pretty shit day, mate,” Tommo threatens, inching towards him instead of away from him, “so it’s in your best interest to just turn around and go home.”

Zayn decides it’s in his best interest to get the hell away from all this, his feet slowly back him away from both of them.

“Wait,” the stranger says, holding his hands up, and they’re both frozen in their tracks. It’s the second time in however many minutes Zayn’s been paralyzed against his own will. “I’m not with them, I brought you here.”

“Let us go,” Zayn says, and they’re released instantly. The bloke looks a bit sheepish to have done that, incredibly enough. He pulls at his lip and flicks his eyes between Zayn and Tommo.

“M’Harry.” He waves, something nervous in the gesture. “I, uh, I’m sure you’ve got some questions.”

“One or two… hundred. I’d say. Wouldn’t you, Zayn?” Tommo turns his head, a mockingly considering look on his face.

“Sounds about right.”

Harry nods. “I’ve got answers. Follow me?”

Neither of them move.

“Please,” Harry tries again, “we should go before more of them show up.”

“How do we know we should trust you?”

“You don’t.” Harry peels a thick glove from his left hand and approaches Zayn slowly, like he’s a wild animal. Tommo looks tense, ready to go on the offense, but there’s nothing about Harry that seems like he’s dangerous. But there’s nothing about Tommo or Zayn that makes them seem dangerous.

“Don’t,” Zayn starts when Harry reaches his hand up, but Harry’s fingers press against his temple anyway.

Suddenly, he doesn’t see the road or Harry or the snow, but the whole world, flashing before his eyes, faster than Zayn can truly process. There’s Glasgow and the cure and Zayn’s family and fire and a dark figure and chaos and fear and hope and the three of them standing with two others Zayn doesn’t know but feels like he should. The weight of it is heavy, so many things, so many minds hooking into Zayn’s. He feels everything, he feels –

Louis snatches Harry hand away from Zayn, gets a non-clawed arm around Harry’s waist when his legs go weak as his body recovers, as the black veins disappear from his hand.

“Are you fucking mental,” Louis spits at Harry, but Harry’s not paying attention to him.

“Do you see?” Harry gasps, his eyes wide and desperate.

Zayn blinks, tears rolling down his cheeks he didn’t know had sprung up. He wipes at them quickly when the ice cold wind makes them sting his face. “We have to go with him.”

“Zayn.”

“Louis.”

Tommo’s face opens in confusion, then shudders closed quickly. “What is that? What does that mean?”

“We have to go with him,” Zayn repeats. Zayn knows he wins when Tommo softens and his claws retract.

“I’ve got a truck,” Tommo offers weakly.

Harry nods and smiles, looking between the two of them. “I’ve got a plane.”

–-

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! If you need me, I'm [here](http://wickershire.tumblr.com).


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